Agricultural giant Monsanto has spent much of the last decade attempting to polish its public image amid campaigns to label genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and horrifying stories about how the company treats anyone who might get in its way .

In 2013, it enlisted Ketchum PR the public relations firm for Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russian natural gas giant Gazprom and many governments known for human rights abuses to help. To reboot the national dialogue, Ketchum created a campaign called GMO Answers, and used social media and third-party scientists to offer a counternarrative to allay concern about Monsantos products. HuffPost has acquired 130 pages of internal documents from an anonymous source that detail the campaign and its tactics for enhancing Monsantos public image tactics that include developing close relationships with one writer in particular that seem to have paid off for the company. (Bayer bought Monsanto in 2018.)

At the time Ketchum launched GMO Answers, Tamar Haspel was a blogger and health writer who had written several pieces supportive of the GMO industry on HuffPost and other sites. Haspel posted a piece enthusiastically promoting the new campaign and was one of the first people to submit a question to the GMO Answers website .